


Something Stung

by faerietell



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mortality, help i'm raven boys trash, pynch - Freeform, ronan + blue bro-ship eyeee, teenagers being teenager-y
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:59:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerietell/pseuds/faerietell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>cabeswater calls. they all answer. </p>
<p>(no, like, literally, cabeswater calls on the phone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Stung

Not always but sometimes, Gansey woke up to the feeling like something had crept into his chest, burrowed its way into his lungs and stung him. Some people would call it drowning, but that was too much. It wasn’t the ocean in his chest, not something as magnificent as that, waves crashing and tides swelling. No, hornets, always the low hum of hornets.

(He was living on borrowed time, and they were all pretending otherwise.)

Where he woke up though, it wasn’t home even though it almost felt like it. There was the smell of tea, and he realized he was sprawled over one of the battered couches on 300 Fox Way, Blue’s legs resting on the crook of his knee. He swallowed and leaned forward to gather his thoughts without waking up the deeply asleep girl who had taken to scowling in her dreams. Likely being all feminist in her sleep with all that fight in her.

Calla was perched irritably on a grand-looking armchair, Orla looking rather smug next to her. Gansey would come back to them later.

Noah wasn’t there, but he’d likely flicker into place when Blue woke up.

Half of Ronan’s shirt rid up as he scrunched up on the end of the floral sofa, but he looked peaceful, like he was sleeping for the first time in weeks. There was a fairly good chance he was. Adam, on the other side of the sofa, was shifting awake himself, a part of the faded flowers imprinted into the couch where Ronan was just a punch of irony.

“Good morning, Calla, Orla,” he greeted, wondering if he could move Blue’s legs without her waking up. She seemed deep asleep.

“I was right,” Orla didn’t look at him, a smirk playing on her lips. “He woke up before Coca Cola shirt.”

“Blue’s interfering with my energy,” Calla scowled.

“Blue’s _asleep_. I’m getting just as good as you.”

Calla arched her brows. “The snake wakes up in ten seconds.”

Orla paused. “Thirty.”

Gansey couldn’t help but silently count to ten, offering a faint nod to Adam who was watching the proceeding with silence. The corner of Adam’s mouth twitched up, and Ronan started awake just as Gansey reached ten.

“What the hell?” Ronan asked, yawning out the last word.

“Well, I’m not making breakfast,” Orla told Calla, stomping away in a flurry of oddly eye-catching skirts.

“Bring anything with you?” Adam asked.

“Don’t think so – need anything, Parrish?” He smirked, but it was too early in the morning for him to be really wicked.

“Just felt like you had,” Adam said.

“Did we fall asleep researching?” Gansey asked. It was a useless question when they so clearly had, but he needed to say something while he tried to carefully move Blue’s legs to the side. Preferably without touching them because they were tantalizingly bare.

“Told you that you should have let me choose the music,” Ronan stretched. “Instead of one of Noah’s fiddling tunes.”

“We tried,” Adam reminded. “You chose – “

“ _Squash one,_ ” he began with delight.

“No,” Calla forbade.

Ronan sneered but fell silent, reveling in the amount of horror colored the collective gazes.

It turned out that Gansey didn’t have to resolve his Blue problem because Calla grabbed the dark-haired girl’s wrist and tugged her to the other side of the couch, waking her up.

“No,” Blue protested.

“Wakey-wakey,” Ronan grinned.

“I thought we were over that, Calla,” Blue blinked away the sleep

“Good morning, Jane,” and it was a good morning, a funny feeling of home when Calla began ordering Adam and Blue into the kitchen, leaving Ronan and Gansey to set the table (“I wouldn’t trust you around a fire,” she added to Ronan).

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Ronan rolled his eyes as he set out the mismatched dishware. He was clearly taking great pleasure on messing up the order on purpose.

“It’s nice,” Gansey said. “I hope they don’t serve the tea.”

“I’ll send out a prayer,” but Ronan didn’t set down cups for both of them.

The pancakes were mushy and just a little undercooked or just a little burnt. They were also blue. Calla had been kind enough to bring two additional cups of tea, and he supposed they should have known better than to trick a psychic.

“I miss food,” said Noah, mournful.

“You wouldn’t want this anyways,” Ronan snorted, but his plate was clean and cup full.

“Let’s see you try cooking,” Blue waved her fork. “We have _variety_.”

“It’s good,” Gansey said, diplomatic. “Compliments to the chef.”

“Not including Coca Cola shirt,” Calla sipped at her tea. “He tried to cook them past undercooked but stop before they got properly done.

Ronan scoffed again.

“Jane, I didn’t know you ate food that wasn’t yogurt,” Gansey glanced over at Blue who had half-eaten the pancakes.

“I don’t make a habit of it,” Blue answered, cheerful.

No one mentioned the empty chairs.

There was a pleasant kind of quiet settling into the dining room (he was almost sure that was what this was supposed to be). It wasn’t silence. It was a quiet punctuated by the squeak of Ronan’s chair, Noah tapping out a rhythm that sounded suspiciously and horribly familiar, Adam coughing down the tea and Blue, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

Then, singing.

“Screw this, I’m out,” Ronan had little to no patience for the singing, but he had little to no patience for most things.

“Not until you do the dishes,” Calla warned.

He glared but picked up his dish, and as he stood up, Adam hastily doing the same, a phone rung in the house. It wasn’t the old telephone installed into the house. It wasn’t a ringtone he knew, but it was coming from Ronan.

“What bastard changed my tone?” He asked in a kind of tone that didn’t ask for an answer.

Calla tapped her fingers, waiting.

He answered it with a choice word that made Gansey start. Then his eyes widened, and he turned to his left. “It’s for you.”

Adam took the phone slowly. It wasn’t a model he recognized either, and Ronan’s phone was tucked into the pockets of his jeans. There was an itching feeling in his lungs again. “Who is it?”

“Cabeswater.”


End file.
